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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

A Tyranid Guide to Wrecking Vehicles

Larry Endures!

I ended my week of vacation at the Greenwood Gamepreserve to get a few games in. Well the turn out seems to be picking back up again so finding a table was the difficult part now (it used to be finding someone to play). As I was chatting with some of the guys I had not seen in a while, I find out that one brought a friend and was trying to get him a demo game. Well his original opponent picked up another game, so I agreed to face him.

Now I feel bad, but I don't remember his name, but we'll call him J-guy. We agreed on 1,000 points, three objectives and standard deployment. One of his friends wrote him a list and collected up the models. They had been explaining the game to him before hand, so he hand some ideas about the game, it wasn't a complete newbie fest.
His list
Chapter master on bike with relic blade.
scout squad with 5 snipers, 5 combat
tactical squad, lascannon flamer and powersword
two land speeders, missiles and heavy bolters
Venerable dreadnaught H-Flamer assault cannon, In a drop pod.

I almost felt bad bringing the tyrannofex at first, and I figured I wouldn't use him to his full potential if he was being too powerful... (little did I know)

Long story short; First turn drop pod assault with dreadnought blocked me in between two pieces of terrain. I shot and then assaulted the Dread with my T-fex to clear the way. Five turns later, my T-fex is still in combat with this Dreadnaught. Aptly named Larry, I had destroyed both arms and immobilized the thing after the first turn of combat. A 3+ on the damage chart would destroy it, but the Venerable rule kept it alive. Turn four saw the chapter master with relic blade assault in to save Larry, only to fail on all attacks, while Larry gets an attack through and I fail both my 2+ armor save and my No Retreat save. The chapter master killed my Tyrannofex on turn five. We ended the game in a draw as I managed to contest the middle objective last turn. There were laughs all around, and J-guy enjoyed the game. He is in the military so he was smart and tactical, and my memorization of basic marines helped the game go smoothly. I hope to get to face him again if he does start his ork army.

I had already planned on being out late that night, so I had eagerly agreed to play against Sandwyrm when he had shown up 2/3rds of the way through the demo game. We had agreed for a 2k game, to get a taste for the upcoming 'ard boyz. Now the most expensive MC in the codex was held up by a Dreadnaught, so I was looking for him to redeem himself, and to keep him away from walkers. It was spearhead capture and control and I let him have first turn. He took a somewhat standard list for him.

Command squad, meltasx3 officer of the fleet, chimera
2-3 squads of vets with meltas in chimeras (chimeltas I think is the term)
1 squad of vets with plasmas in chimera
2 squads of stormtroopers with meltas in chimeras
two vendettas with some flamer troops inside
demolisher russ
battle cannon russ

Now I'll be honest, I've often dreaded facing against Sandwyrm. He is great to play against, and is very nice, but he knows what he's doing. He is very tactical and competitive, I used to always struggle against vehicles, and with the 10+ he brings, I set my goals as a draw most games. With my new toys finally assembled for the new codex, I was looking forward to putting them through their paces in a real combat.

Now I jumped the gun and seized the initiative before he did his scout moves, so surprise when he moved his vendettas away from my gun line. Really it just made me switch targets with my units, but I'll keep control next time with the dice rolls.

First turn; I let lose the Tyranids beasts of war upon the Imperium. The first Tyrannofex shot the right hand vendetta, blowing it up and killing half the passengers. The second one shot off a lascannon from the second vendetta. My front hive guard shot the sentinels, destroying one. Everything else moved forward, leaving the gaunts to hold my objective.

His first turn; He shifted his tanks around to line up shots, and then unloaded onto the Tyrannofexes. Between 2+ armor and a mobile 5+ cover save, They took only one wound.

Turn two; Continued to move forward, and got the Trygon ready to assault. First Tyrannofex took down the second vendetta, while the second failed to hit against one of the Russ. Hive guard moved closer to make a few failed pot shots. The trygon assaulted the sentinels, wiping them out and leaving him in the open.

His turn; While his Officer of the fleet kept my reserves out of the game, his came in. His plasma vets came in behind the trygon, jumped out and tore into my hive guard. His Troopers outflanked and drove up to my objective and Flamed my poor gaunts off. Marbo also showed up in the building with my hive guard, and dropped a demo charge on my warriors, killing two of them.

Turn three; My trygon surviving with one wound, he moved up to assault again. My surviving hive guard ran towards the rest of my army, and my Tyrannofexs moved closer yet to the Russes. The warriors turned around to help the gaunts, and shot marbo to death. The Tyrgon shot and assaulted the squad that had fallen out of the crashed vendetta, while I stubbornly shot at the heavy tanks to no avail. My close combat warriors podded in, scattered behind the tank line and twiddled their talons.

His turn; His last reserves came in, troopers in chimera, outflanking right next to the first one. My gaunts died in droves that turn. More shots took down the tyrgon, did wounds to the tyrannofexes, killed a venomthrope, and killed all but one close combat warrior. The tanks huddled around their objective.

After that I don't remember the order as well (slacked on the pictures during the heated battle) but it went something like...
Tyrannofex assaulted a russ, destroying it, the other one made random shots, Tervigon had two perils of the warp on it in the past two turns, but finally made some gaunts and gave them fnp. Genestealers came from reserves, and coupled with hive guard and warriors, tried to fend off the objective. Tervigon and gaunts took out the plasma vets. The Tank wall prevented any means of getting to his objective.

The game ended in a Minor Lose for me, as His last Storm trooper managed to run forwards and contest my objective. Overall a very fun game, with half of his vehicles having weapons destroyed, the other half either immobilized or destroyed. I was not used to judging that long of distances with the shots, and Sandwyrm wasn't used to being shot by bugs from that distance. I definitely need to figure out a way for some distanced anti-infantry for when I take out some tanks. Overall an excellent game with some new models and a good opponent.
This has helped me with my unit review I'm working on.
And as always
Keep on hunting.